


Surprise

by thepurplewombat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: An attempt to vent my strong feelings about an ongoing WIP, F/M, Heartbreak, I was angry when I wrote this, I'm still angry, Spoilers for The Return Chapter 13, this is a fanfic of a fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2018-12-25 01:14:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12024996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat
Summary: Okay so I am unhealthily invested in CeleryThesis' The Return. To the point where Chapter 13 inspired...well, this.Don't read this before hitting Chapter 13 of The Return, because it won't make any sense and it will spoil that story. Which is...such a good story, you guys, I don't even have words to explain how good it is. Seriously, it's fucking fantastic and EVERYONE IN THE WORLD should be following along.And when you hit Chapter 13, and you feel the rage consume you, come over here. I've got what you need.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CeleryThesis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CeleryThesis/gifts), [Marriage1988](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marriage1988/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Return](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11675088) by [CeleryThesis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CeleryThesis/pseuds/CeleryThesis). 



The couple on the bed hadn’t noticed the door opening, too wrapped up in their own little world to pay attention to the sounds around them. Hermione was frozen, watching the long scarlet fall of Lily’s hair as she moved languidly, Severus’ cock sliding slowly in and out of her, slick with her juices. He had a hand on her hip and his entire body was straining upwards, and from this angle Hermione could see, as she’d never been able to see before, that his toes were literally curling with pleasure. She could see he was close to orgasm by the way his head was tilted back on the pillow, by the white-knuckle grip he had on the bedsheets she’d picked out with such care.

“God, I love this, love you,” he moaned, and Hermione felt her heart shatter in her chest. Her entire body was shaking now, ice-cold and shaking, her hands and lips numb, and she knew she had only moments to decide what to do. She could leave and pretend that she hadn’t seen, and live with the aching gnawing hole that Severus had cut in her chest. She could cry and make a scene, but that…that idea was vile, unsupportable.

So she did the only thing she could think of at the moment.

She straightened her back, summoned her beaded bag from its place in her closet, and began to pack. Methodically. Calmly. Paying no attention whatsoever to the groans and cries of ecstasy from the couple on the bed, who were so lost in themselves that it wasn’t until she closed her underwear drawer with more of a slam than usual that they noticed her at all. From the corner of her eye she saw Severus freeze, and then there was the sound she’d loved to draw out of him, the long low moan of orgasm as he came, buried deep in Lily’s body.

Hermione turned away and went to her closet, yanking her clothes off their hangers with only a little more force than necessary, her breathing tight and controlled. Everything was controlled. If she let herself slip for a moment, even so much as a second, she would turn into a blubbering ruin, and if there was one thing Hermione had learned from Bellatrix, it’s that showing weakness to your enemies only got you more of the same.

“Hermione-“ Severus was standing behind her now, and she couldn’t help it, she flinched away from the sound of his voice as though he’d struck her (and hadn’t he? She might have preferred it if he’d taken his fists to her, if anyone had bothered to ask her).

“Don’t,” she said, her voice low. “Just…just don’t.”

She sidled away without looking at him, heading for the door. She’d send someone for the rest of her clothes, she could manage, she just had to get – get out, get away, get a moment to _think_ and a place to fall apart because, because if she stayed here a moment longer she was going to humiliate herself even more.

But Severus grabbed her by the arm and forced her to face him, and she skittered backwards with a low cry until her back hit the doorjamb.

“Hermione, _please_ ,” he said, and she shook her head, but every thought in her mind was hidden by a blank buzzing whiteness and there were no, no words for him. Not when he stood in front of her naked with another woman’s scent on his face, his cock, on his hands that still reached for her, pleading. Not when Lily was sitting up in the bed Hermione and Severus had picked out together, her perfect red hair falling over her perfect shoulder, languid as a cat and twice as smug.

She wet her lips and looked away and wrenched the necklace he’d given her from her throat, dropping it to the floor, and the sharp pain before the thin golden chain snapped brought some part of her back, and she found words after all.

“They say the ones you love can hurt you more than anyone else,” she said, looking at the thin spill of gold on the floor they’d sanded and finished together, the conversational tone of her voice as thin and brittle as the smile she forced her twisting mouth into. “I didn’t believe it, but now I do.” And she looked at his eyes for the first time since she’d entered the room – _their room_ , his room and hers, where they hadn’t even had a chance to fuck yet, between the move and the trip and then Lily – but if he had any expression in his eyes she couldn’t have said, because the tears she’d managed to stave off for so long were finally here, filling her eyes and blinding her. “Bellatrix never hurt me like you have,” she said, and Apparated away, crashing through their wards with a sound like thunder.

She found herself in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, her bag clutched in her hand, and slid down a counter until she was sitting on the ground, and finally, finally, she let the tears come.

That was where Sirius found her an hour later, sitting on the floor of the kitchen with her arms looped around her knees, her eyes fixed on the middle distance as, in her mind, she watched her lover fuck another woman over, and over again. She wondered how many times it had happened, and where, and how often. It had probably started before they came back from New York, and she should have seen it coming, she really should have – the way Severus took Lily’s side from the moment Hermione had arrived, had let her kiss him and hang on him the way Hermione had always been made to understand she wasn’t allowed to. The way he had stayed silent when Lily had poked and prodded at their relationship, as though he was ashamed of her, of them. The way they had always stood a little bit closer than was really appropriate. She really should have seen it coming.

She was such an idiot.

“Hermione?” Sirius asked, pulling her back from her reverie with a hand on her shoulder, and she looked at him for the first time. “Are you okay?”

“Can I stay here for a little while?” she asked, and he nodded and didn’t ask any more questions, just quietly walked her up to a spare room. When she stood in the middle of the room and stared into space Sirius gently took off her jacket and put her bag on the bedside table, then manoeuvred her under the opened blankets of the bed. She lay staring as he put a hand on her shoulder and sat with her for awhile, but when he made to stand she clutched at his hand and stared up at him, wide-eyed and lost. “Sirius?”

“What do you need, love?” he asked, keeping the comforting clutch on her arm, and he wasn’t Hermione’s mother, was the furthest thing from her mother she could ever have imagined, but he was here, a solid comforting presence she’d known since she was fourteen, and he was stroking a hand over her hair in the way she liked and really, he was the closest thing she had.

“Do you think anyone will ever love me, Sirius?” she asked, aware that the question was pathetic, as pathetic as she herself was, but really in that moment unable to stop herself.

His hand clenched on her shoulder and his eyes closed briefly.

“Hermione, did Snape…”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said quickly. “I just…do you think so? Or am I really so unlovable?” And here were the tears again, hello old friends, coursing from her eyes just as though she’d invited them.

Sirius leant down and placed a gentle kiss on her temple.

“I think you’re the most lovable person I’ve ever met, Hermione. You’re kind and generous and beautiful and any wizard would be lucky to have you.”

Her laugh was bitter and tear-choked and sounded nothing like her own, but that was okay because clearly, Hermione Granger was nothing particularly special.

“Doesn’t seem like it,” she muttered. “I think I’d like to sleep now, Sirius.”

Xxx

Sirius closed the door behind him and contemplated his options. The most attractive of his options involved finding Snape and beating seven kinds of shit out of him, but he could already see Hermione’s sad, disappointed face, and whatever Snape had done, Hermione didn’t need another wizard letting her down. So instead he went downstairs and hurled hexes at the basement wall until dinnertime, and took her up a plate.

Three hours later, the plate was still there.

Hermione went to work the next morning, drawn and pale but clearly trying very hard to pretend that everything was okay. She went to work that morning and every morning after, leaving before the house was awake and coming back when they were all asleep, looking like a ghost. As far as Sirius could tell, she wasn’t eating at all, and he couldn’t tell if she was sleeping. Snape turned up on the first day, and on the second, and on the third, and Sirius was delighted to inform him that Hermione was not there. The man looked like shit, honestly, as though he hadn’t slept in a week and had been drinking to boot, but Hermione was the most forgiving person Sirius had ever met, and she paled at the mention of Snape’s name, so Sirius had limited sympathy.

A week after she’d arrived at Grimmauld, she came home early.

“They told me to come home and sleep,” Hermione said blankly, and wandered up the stairs. She’d lost weight, and Sirius and Harry looked at each other with deep concern, even despite Harry’s new-father tiredness.

“She’s not okay,” Harry said quietly, once they were sure she was out of earshot.

“I don’t know what to do,” Sirius said, just as softly. “I want to go and confront Snape but without knowing what happened, I don’t know…”

“I sympathize with your desire to hex Snape,” Ginny said, leaning back against the couch and patting baby Rose on the back. “It’s a terrible idea, though. Especially since Hermione won’t tell anyone what’s happened.”

Things came to a head the next day, when Ginny managed to coax Hermione down to lunch. Harry’d cooked something tasty and bland, because frankly none of them were sure her stomach was up to anything fancy at the moment, and they’d just gotten her to sit down when Lily came breezing in, smiling and calling out greeting. Hermione went ghost-pale and dropped the spoon she’d just dipped in the soup, and then she was gone, and Sirius watched Harry’s expression change as he stared at the door she’d left through, becoming blank and hard. It was suddenly easy to remember that Harry had been a soldier before he ever became a man.

“Lily,” he said, calling her by her name as he never had, “what have you done to Hermione?”

Lily went still, but she was still smiling, a trifle smug, and then she tossed her hair and laughed.

“Oh, she walked in on me and Severus in an…intimate moment,” Lily said, “and took it a bit badly.”

Even Sirius, who’d never startled easily, jumped when Harry’s fist hit the table, sending the silverware quivering, and Ginny opened her mouth twice before she managed a word.

“You’ve been fucking Snape,” Ginny said. “You’ve been fucking Hermione’s lover.”

“Well, it’s not like it’s a real relationship!” Lily said, still half-amused, but Sirius could see the signs in her face, in her hands; Lily had never liked her decisions questioned. “She’s much too young for him anyway, and none of you approve! She’s just a girl, she’ll get over it soon enough-“

“Get out,” Harry said, the one in his voice making Sirius shiver.

“Harry, I- what?”

“Get. Out. Of. My. House,” Harry said. “I don’t want to see your face ever again. Leave, and never come back.”

“But I’m your _mother_!” Lily cried, and Sirius could tell that she thought it was her trump card, her ace in the hole, but it was almost certainly the wrong tack to take with Harry in this moment.

“You? A a mother? Don’t make me laugh. While you and my father were holidaying in America, do you know what Hermione Granger, that _girl_ who, by the way, saved your mind, was doing?” Harry took two steps closer and Lily stepped back, until her back hit the wall, staring wide-eyed at the son she never really knew. “She was making sure I got to class. She was making sure I did my homework. She was making sure I ate. She was making sure, every fucking year, that I. Didn’t. Die. Tell me, _mother_ , how many times did you hold me until I fell asleep after a nightmare?”

Lily shook her head, wordless, tears gathering in her eyes.

“Don’t have a number? But it’s pretty close to zero, isn’t it? I don’t have a number for how many times I fell asleep with my head in Hermione’s lap, and woke up with her still watching over me, but that’s only because it _happened too many times to count_. Would you like to know where I’d be now without her? I’d be dead. I’d be dead in first year, when I drank the wrong bottle. Maybe I’d be dead in fourth year when there was nobody to teach me a decent fucking Summoning Charm. Oh, I’d definitely be dead that last year, though, when nobody but Hermione saw what was coming, nobody but Hermione planned ahead. When nobody but Hermione could put the clues together. While you were having a lovely time in the fucking colonies, Hermione Granger was screaming under Bellatrix’s wand – and _still_ she got the things we needed, the wand and the hair, to end the damn war.” Harry was almost screaming now, screaming and crying at once, and Sirius and Ginny both moved to touch him but he wrenched away from them, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. When he spoke again his voice was cold and he didn’t look at Lily. “Hermione has been more of a mother to me than you ever were. She has comforted me, she has loved me, and she’s been a friend to me for twenty years. How _fucking dare you_ hurt her like this.”

Lily was looking from Sirius to Ginny, looking as though she was expecting someone to speak up for her, but Ginny shook her head and stepped away.

“You’re Harry’s mother, so I won’t hex you,” Ginny said. “But I don’t want you in my house, and I don’t want you near my daughter.” She took Harry’s arm and they left the kitchen together, leaning on each other, and Sirius was left alone with Lily, who still looked more confused than hurt.

“I think it’d probably be best if you left,” Sirius said, as gently as he could, and Lily gasped.

“Sirius, I-“

“Lily, I don’t care. You can make any excuse you want, but the fact of the matter is that if it wasn’t for Hermione, I’d still be shitting myself in the Spell Damage Ward, with no more clue of what was going on than a potato. I could forgive you for faking your death but I don’t think I can forgive you for what you’ve done to Hermione.” And there, there it was, the famous Black temper, because he hit the wall beside her hair and screamed in her face. “Goddammit, Lily, I owe her my _life_! You owe her…God, Lily, you owe her your life, and Harry’s, and the granddaughter you’ll probably never know. You wouldn’t even have had the chance to fuck her over with Snape if she hadn’t sat in the Shrieking Shack at eighteen, piss-scared and half-starved, keeping him alive through sheer bloody-mindedness. You owe her _everything_ , and _this_ is how you repay her. I don’t know you. Get out.”

Sirius turned away from her, but his closed eyes couldn’t block out the sound of her choked sob, or the crack of her Apparition.

After a moment, and a deep breath, he took Hermione’s soup up to the room she’d chosen as her own.


	2. Chapter 2

It took two weeks for Hermione to feel up to going to the house again. Well, that and the paperwork she’d been waiting on was finally finished. She still didn’t think she could bear to see him though, so she went in the middle of the day when he was most likely to be at SNAPE.

She didn’t particularly care if she saw Lily or not – in fact, for the first time in her life Hermione understood the urge to cause another person pain. She’d never wanted to _hurt_ anyone before in her life; she’d punched Malfoy to make him stop, and she’d given Umbridge to the centaurs because there had been no other way, but she’d never wanted to hurt anyone. Even Bellatrix, she’d just wanted to _make her stop_. She’d never understood that urge in other people, and if she’d been asked she would have said she never would understand it, but now?

She understood now, and that unwanted understanding was a lovely thank-you gift from her best friend’s mum, wasn’t it? When Hermione had come through a war with that last essential bit of innocence left, that one bit of darkness she hadn’t touched yet.

For good or ill, Lily wasn’t at the house, and Hermione let herself in with the key she still had, the one she planned to leave behind when she left. She put it on the kitchen counter with the papers and got started with the packing. She didn’t allow herself to dwell – no point in that now, after all – just stuffed everything that had been hers _before_ into boxes and shrunk them hastily. She wanted to get this done before he came home.

Of course, her luck being what it was, she’d hardly gotten started on the books before the front door banged open.

“Hermione?” he called from the parlour, and his voice sent a shudder through her that she couldn’t stop. She didn’t allow herself to react, other than to begin to pack at a slightly more frantic pace.

There was a curse from the kitchen and a pounding on the stairs, and then he was standing behind her, she could _smell_ him, cigarettes and potion fumes, and hear his quick-sharp breaths.

“Hermione,” he said quietly, “what’s this?”

She glanced over her shoulder at the papers in his hands, turned back to the shelf.

“The deeds to the house and the papers signing my share of the business over to you,” she said, and a vile little voice wanted to add _or have you forgotten how to read_ but she didn’t say it aloud because she didn’t, after all, want to hurt _him_. It wasn’t his fault, after all, that she wasn’t enough for him. She’d never been enough for anyone, and it had been foolish to think that he would be the exception.

“Why?” He sounded stunned, even a little hurt, and she put a hand against the bookshelf and let her shoulders sag. “Hermione-“

“Because they’re yours,” she said. “You don’t have to worry, I won’t take anything that’s yours.” She’d already put the pearl necklace he’d given her – that she’d worn on the night she’d reintroduced Lily to her son – on the dresser in the main bedroom. She couldn’t bear the thought of it against her skin anymore.

His hands landed on her shoulders like a clap of thunder, and she flinched back from his touch, putting her back to the bookshelves and her hands in front of her, as though she could really stop him, but he took two steps back, his own hands high.

“Hermione, don’t…can we talk about this, please?” he asked.

She shook her head and looked at her feet in her sensible trainers, nothing like the stunning heels Lily wore every time Hermione saw her in the _Prophet_.

“I don’t think there’s anything left to say, is there?” she asked. “You love Lily. I don’t blame you, honestly, she’s very…she’s very beautiful. And I’m…well. Yes. I mean, it would have been kinder if you’d left me before starting up with her, and I do blame you a little for that, but…look, Severus, I don’t want to fight with you. I’ll just pack my things and then…I mean, I’d really appreciate it if I never had to see you again, okay?”

“I don’t- I mean, yes, of course I love Lily, but-“

“And you don’t love me,” Hermione said, and her voice had become small and wobbly and she hated it, _hated_ being so fucking weak in front of this man who didn’t love her. “I thought you might, you see. That’s the part that hurts. I thought maybe you did and you just didn’t want to say it, so I didn’t say it either because I didn’t want to pressure you, but I did, I _do_ love you, but it was easy enough to say to her so it must have been me and Jesus Christ Severus, haven’t you hurt me _enough_? Do you really hate me that much that you have to keep, keep pushing and poking at it?” She turned away from him with her hands over her mouth, trying for the thousandth time since she’d walked into their bedroom two weeks ago to contain the sobs that wanted so desperately to escape.

There was a moment of silence behind her, long enough that she blinked most of the tears from her eyes and reached for another book to shrink for the box.

“You love me?” Severus said eventually, his voice small and uncertain.

“I thought you knew,” Hermione said, and didn’t turn to look at him. “I thought you knew, because we built a business together and we bought a house together and what, exactly, did you think this relationship _was_ , Severus?” She turned around suddenly, a hot bright bubble of anger swelling in her chest and honestly, this was much better than the cracked, bleeding sadness she’d been stuck with for two weeks now. “Because I thought that we were building a life together here. I thought that we loved each other. I thought that what we had was real. But obviously you thought differently so I would like you to explain to me what _you_ thought we were doing.”

He looked devastated, he looked as though every piece of bad news you could possibly imagine had arrived all at once, staring at her with his hands dangling useless at his side.

“I didn’t know, Hermione. I didn’t know you loved me, I thought we were just…I don’t know what I thought we were doing, but if I’d known, if I’d _known_ that you loved me, I would have-“

“You’d have fucked Lily anyway,” Hermione said flatly. “Because even if you didn’t think we had love, we had something. We had something, and maybe it wasn’t perfect, maybe I wasn’t exactly what you wanted, but we had something, and it obviously wasn’t as important to you as getting in Lily fucking Potter’s knickers, was it? Did you even think of me, Severus? At all?”

“It wasn’t about you, Hermione, it was never about you,” he said, and reached for her again, to do what she didn’t know, but she ducked aside and shook her head.

“There’s your problem, Severus. That’s your problem right there. Because it _should_ have been about me. When you’re in a relationship and you’re sticking your cock in something, it should _absolutely_ be about the person you’re _actually in the relationship with_. But it wasn’t, was it? It never even occurred to you to think that I might be hurt by what you did, what you were doing. Because in the end, I’m just…not that important to you. You were everything to me, Severus, _everything_ , and I was just a convenient hole to stick your cock in until something better came along.”

Severus tried to say something but the rage was there now, like nothing she’d ever felt before, like a tidal wave or a firestorm, and she reached out with both hands and shoved him back and way from her.

“Was it just Lily, then?” she demanded. “Or is that what you’ve been doing at the Cokeworth house? Fucking every passing tart that caught your fancy? Tell, me, Severus, did you laugh at me? I bet you did, I bet you thought I was just _fucking hilarious_. Naïve little Hermione who thinks she’s in love. Naïve little Hermione, who thinks she’s happy. God, you and Lily must have had such a giggle about me back in New York, this silly, stupid, _ugly_ little girl, who’s naïve enough to think that someone will love her back. Did you enjoy making me come to America to heal her, Severus?” She shoved him again, and he fell backwards on the couch, wide-eyed and startled, because she’d never been like this before, never been this angry with him (never been this angry in her _life_ ). “Did you enjoy the delicious irony of it when you were fucking her, that she’d still think she was fifteen years old if it wasn’t for _naïve little Hermione_?”

“I didn’t know you loved me,” he said, almost helpless, and Hermione’s rage cracked and shattered and was gone like the brittle soap bubble it had always been, and she sighed and rubbed her forehead.

“Well, now you know,” she said. She turned and looked around at the half-empty boxes and shelves that littered the room. “I’ll send someone to get the rest of my things.”

Severus was suddenly on his feet in front of her, and his expression was so pleading that Hermione was forced to pause a moment. She was being ridiculous, because there was nothing that could make this better or make it hurt less, the end of something she’d thought was forever, but even now, even after everything, she thought she didn’t want to hurt him.

“There was never anyone else, Hermione,” he finally said. “I know…I know you won’t believe me and I don’t blame you, but there was…Lily was the only one. And it wasn’t – it wasn’t because you weren’t perfect, because God, you _are_ , you’re lovely and beautiful and every bright and shining thing I never deserved-“

“But-“

“No,” he said and somehow managed to be stern and pleading both at once, not reaching for her but his hands twitching as though he’d like to. “Please let me say this. _Please_. I know I haven’t the right, but please just let me say this? And then you can…do whatever you need to do. Please?”

And because she could never deny him anything he wanted, and because after everything there was still that ache in her chest that felt like love, Hermione took a deep breath and sat down.

He looked so surprised and suddenly hopeful that she almost smiled, and then he started to pace, back and forth in front of her, his hands tugging at his hair. She was just about to get up and leave when he took a deep breath and went to his knees in front of her, taking both of her hands in his and looking up into her face.

“The first thing you should know is that I kicked Lily out,” he said, and he must have registered her look of surprise, because he hurried to go on. “It wasn’t too long after you left that I realised what a colossal cock-up I’d made of everything. I asked her to go, because I was hoping you’d come home and we’d…we’d talk, and I could…I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since the day you left.”

“Harry said-“

“I know,” he said wearily. “Black told me. He was here yesterday, honestly I’m surprised it took him so long. But he…he said some things that made me think, and I realised that…well. I know she implied that she was still living here, but honestly, I don’t know where she is.”

Hermione nodded slowly.

“You-“

“Please, can I just…” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes as though steeling himself for a great pain. “I never deserved you. You’re…you’re beautiful, and you’re brilliant, and every time you smiled at me I had to stop myself from checking to see who you were smiling at. And I thought…I thought you were too…too everything to love someone like me, so I didn’t…I thought I could just…” He let go of her hands to pull at his hair, and Hermione grabbed them back, holding them in her lap.

“It’s okay, Severus. Just breathe, and tell me what you want to say,” she said, in her soft and soothing Healer Granger voice, the one she used on the scared and the hurt and the badly damaged – and she was beginning to suspect that no matter what he looked like on the outside, Severus was all three. “I can’t promise it will change anything, but I promise to listen. Okay?”

He nodded miserably and curled his long slim fingers around her palms, and fixed his eyes on their joined hands.

“You’re too fucking kind too,” he muttered, and shook his head. “But I could never understand what someone like you could want with someone like me. I never thought you’d want me forever so I…I tried to keep – Christ, I don’t know how to explain this. I tried to be…not as attached. I thought you’d leave, so I tried to keep enough of me for _myself_ so that if you – when you left, then I’d have…something. Yes? Do you understand?”

His eyes were desperate so she nodded. And she did understand, a little, how someone who had been hurt as badly as he’d been and thought as little of themselves could be…scared.

“And I’d never have betrayed you, _never_ , but…” He paused and took another deep breath, and bowed his head so she couldn’t see his face. “When I was…after Lily…left. And we all thought she was dead. I had these…I guess you’d call them fantasies. Where she was not dead after all. And we had this whole life, and I’d just…pretend. You know? I’d pretend she was there with me. Every night. Every day. It was fucked up, but it was all I had, and then _he_ came back and those fantasies were even more important, because Potter was in danger every day and I was failing her, failing at protecting him, and they were the only thing that let me sleep at night, imagining Lily.”

Hermione nodded slowly, a terrible understanding washing over her.

“And after the war they never went away, did they?” she asked gently, and he shook his head.

“When we…after the first time you and I were together, they went away for a little while. But then I became scared that you, that _we_ were becoming so important to me, so they came back, and…I was happy, do you understand? Because when I inevitably fucked everything up and you threw me out of your life, then I’d at least have the house in Cokeworth and my imaginary Lily, so I wouldn’t be…I’d have _something_. And I knew it wasn’t healthy, but I thought, where’s the harm?”

Hermione could see the harm as clear as day, but she said nothing, just rested a hand on his bowed head and looked at the room they’d furnished and decorated together, at the cosy furnishings and the piles and stacks of books.

“And then Lily came back,” Severus said quietly. “And I was…she was there, and you were there, and everything was all twisted up. But I was okay, I was doing well, I was _coping_ and then that day when she was at the Ministry, I had all these…thoughts. About Lily and me and what could have been, and there were all these fantasies, and she was _there_ and, and in my head, Lily loved me, and you…I didn’t know, you see? That you loved me. And I know that’s not an excuse, I do know that, Hermione, but…”

“Severus,” Hermione said, and the word was no more than a breath, a susurration, and Severus’ hands clenched on hers. His head was bowed over her lap and all she could see was his hair and the nape of his neck, and she could feel his fast shallow breaths

“So I fucked her and it was…it wasn’t quite right, and then we came here and she kept…and I tried not to want her, I swear I did, because I wanted to tell you, to talk to you, I thought at least I could claim as much honour as that, and then…”

“And then I caught you.”

“Yes. It was the first time since New York. And when you left…when you left, I realised that everything with Lily had been off because it wasn’t you, and that you were everything I ever wanted. I didn’t realise that I loved you until you’d already left.”

Hermione’s breath was coming fast and she was almost crying again, but Severus was finally silent and she had to find something to say, and soon. The truth seemed like a good place to start.

“I…I don’t know what to say, Severus,” she said softly, and stroked his head so that he wouldn’t look at her with his big pleading eyes, this strange and vulnerable man she’d never really known at all. “I think I understand, a little. Why you…did what you did. But you hurt me very badly, Severus, and I don’t know that I can forgive you. Can you understand that?”

Severus nodded, his eyes on the floor.

"Give me some time to think," Hermione said gently. "A week. I'll come and talk to you again in a week. Okay?"

She didn't wait for him to answer, just disapparated straight through the wards and into her room at Grimmauld, where she sat on her bed and thought for hours.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I might write a second chapter where Snape gets his, but I make no promises. This was very cathartic to write, and I would now like to return to my regular programming of zombies and sass.


End file.
